(Rodnik Dlia Zhazhdushchikh) At last, Yuri Ilyenko is emerging from under the shadow of Paradjanov and is winning recognition as a master director of the new Soviet cinema. Ilyenko's first film is a Ukrainian lyric in the tradition of Dovzhenko's silents, a wonder in every sense of the word. An old man awakens to his own feelings of love and loneliness amidst memories of war and family reunion. Talking animals, music created for children, anti-Christian satire work cheek by jowl with a brilliant array of pastoral photographic styles. Written by the poet Ivan Dratsch as a tragicomic character study, the film becomes Ilyenko's parable of memory, death and rites of passage. Made in 1965 and finally brought off the shelf in 1987, A Spring for the Thirsty cost the director/cinematographer 22 years of frustration and official censure. It was banned, and so were virtually all his subsequent films. Only now are the other works of this remarkable artist beginning to surface. Russell Merritt